1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a new and useful composition with a high proteinic value, capable of dehydration, and useful for the preparation of human food products and a method of preparing the same.
The term phosphated or citrated blood means briefly to treat the blood with, or to add to it sodium citrate or phosphates, as anticoagulant agents, in order to centrifuge and to separate the sanguineous or blood corpuscles, the hemoglobin and the plasma. This process is ordinary in that connection. (See, for example, pages 4 to 107 in the book "Blood Derivatives and Substitutes" of Whit Ch. S. and Weinstein J. J., The Williams and Wilkin Co., 1947). As referred to the human blood, the method can be found in "Tratado de Farmacognosia" by Heber U. Younghen, translated from the sixth English edition, by Francisco Giral, Editorial Atlante, S.A., Mexico D.F., 1951, page 1211.
As regards the terms "emulsifiers", "surfactants", we quote, for a better understanding, the title and the first paragraphs of the "Boletin Tecnico L.G.-19-11 M-2-66" of Atlas Chemical Industries, Inc. of the United States:
"Emulsifier? . . . Surfactant? Which is the proper term to describe chemical compounds that promote the mixing of oil and water, provide "dryness" in ice cream and retard stalling of yeast-raised baked foods?. "Surfactant" is the more generally used term of the two and is preferred. That is, surfactants reduce surface tension between fat and water . . . promote the rehydration of "instant" foods . . . as well as insure emulsification of vitamins and flavoring oils. Emulsifier is more correctly used when the surfactant's chief purpose is to stabilize a mixture of two immiscible liquids such as oil and water".
Referring to the term "lactylate", as can be seen in "Food and Processing", May 1976, page 65, it is described in this way:
"Lactylated" fatty acids or esters represent a highly functional group of food emulsifiers used primarily in applications where aeration is required such as in toppings, cakes and icings. They are made by use of dehydrated lactic acid and acyl chloride. The products have more surface activity and are slightly more hydrophilic than the mono- and diglycerides.
Regarding the meaning of the term "dehydratable" it is observed that not all products can pass from the liquid state to the powdered one, without losing their basic properties. In the present application, the product is termed dehydratable because it can pass from the liquid state to the powdered one as a whole, keeping all the properties of the composition of the product. Therefore, this term is limitative of the products because of this essential condition of keeping these properties, and when hydrated again, it returns to the state of the former steady emulsion, as in the beginning and with the same properties. Furthermore, it is significant, precisely because it is pointed out that it can be converted from liquid to powder and then be rehydrated or hydrated once again.
2. Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 2,171,428 discloses some similar components to those of the present invention (blood and stabilizer, gum for example) but does not necessarily suggest the formula of this invention, using mainly and occasionally, unpredictable ingredients. As for the rest, the destiny of the product of this patent is by no means different from the present application. On the other hand, the U.S. Pat. No. 2,171,428 aims at a greater exploitation and stabilization of the basic matters in sausage, meanwhile the composition of the presently claimed invention substitutes as a replacement for the whole egg. The product of the present application has always at least one or two emulsifiers and the stabilizers are used only when necessary.
In the U.S. Pat. No. 2,171,428 the patentees could have used gum and milk only and get almost the same result. In addition to the lack of identity with the main and accessory components of the present invention, it is well known that, in the physio-chemical processes, some products or raw materials of common use, when used in some different processes, yield final products with their own identity, i.e. with different properties. Clearly summing up, the final result is different.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,277,336, although it may use similar components does not suggest the present invention, since the properties are different. The sought result is important. This patent sought and obtained the substitution of the egg's yolk; in the present application, the substitution of the whole egg (clearer yolk) is sought.
The use of sugar in the present invention, also referred to in U.S. Pat. No. 653,956, is accessory and not fundamental. If the whole egg contains sugars, when it is desired to reproduce it, necessarily sugar must be used. This accessory additive does not belong to the essence of the invention.
When one wishes to reproduce a product similar to another existing in nature, its constitutive elements should be combined so that the product could be obtained effectively. In that lies the invention and not in catching scattered known elements and by an adequate unforseeable process, combining them to get the object. In the present application, it is shown how this process should be developed in the examples which follow.
Supporting the above remarks, it should be observed that in the U.S. Pat. No. 1,277,336 the concentrated plasma is used, as well as in U.S. Pat. No. 2,171,428, as an emulsifying agent for fatty materials, so that in the former the plasma is carried out to the "syrup" point, a term that surely is rather undefined; and in the latter, in greater accuracy, to "several solid contents", but generally, high. But in the present invention, a precisely inverted process is developed, since a first or second emulsifying agent is used to obtain fatty materials emulsified with the water which is there added.
The aforesaid patient, as above noted, uses the plasma as an emulsifying agent, and the present inventors do not use it in this way. They use the plasma as a protein carrying element; meanwhile they use as emulsifying agents glyceryl monoesterate and lecithin, as in the basic formula given for example; or another series of emulsifying agents, according to the fatty materials to be emulsified. It should be noted that the process in the present application starts adding fat to one or to several of the above said agents; then adding whole water (observing the temperature of the process while adding these elements).
We point out that, from the phase "water in fat" through stirring and through the added emulsifiers, the present inventors go on to the phase "fat in water", having already obtained an emulsion, without using yet the albumin or the plasma. We reiterate that the plasma is used as a protein agent. They do not deny its emulsifying action; but they add it when they have already the emulsion with the fat, the water and said emulsifying agents. Moreover, they point out that the plasma in this invention could be used even in powdered form, without impairing the process at all, nor impeding the product's obtention.
We outline the latter because in the aforesaid patents they could not use powdered plasma, since they use it as an emulsifying agent and the said powdered plasma could not fulfill these functions because they do not use water in its composition.
We are sure that in the aforesaid patents, the emulsion could not be obtained through powdered plasma; in the present invention, it can be so obtained, because when the plasma is added in its original state (or powdered) the emulsion with the fats, with the emulsifying agents and with the water, is already made.
Returning to the above, the invention's essential element is not the use of known ingredients, but the unexpected way they are used to get the aimed final and surprising result. The inventors intended to obtain a whole egg, or to substitute the whole natural egg by a product coming from different elements, that were used in some stated process (we disclose it in every detail, even in those that could appear as obvious, against the aforesaid patents, lacking of details) and we were successful. This final unexpected result shows that this is an invention.
We add that the U.S. Pat. No. 1,227,336 is restricted to reproduce the properties of the natural egg yolk, being a product of acid reaction; the white, on the contrary, is of alkaline reaction, precisely the opposite reaction; the yolk constitutes about 28 to 30% of egg weight, meanwhile the white goes from about 55 to 60%; the yolk density does not go beyond about 1.030, meanwhile, that of the white is higher; the yolk has little albumin, meanwhile the white is albumin in its main part; the yoke has a considerably greater fat percent, meanwhile it scarcely exists in the white.
So we could enunciate notorious differences between them, for example textures used in cooking, viscosity, etc., stating an outlined difference between them. We state, therefore, that the reproduction of the natural egg-yolk is different from that of the whole natural egg (liquid phase) that we have obtained. Furthermore, the yolk and white mixture, as found proportionally and ordinarily in the natural egg, yields a third edible product, that in the last international food products congress, was pointed out as a protein-type, having physical and chemical properties differing from that of the original two parts. Summarizing, the U.S. Pat. No. 1,277,336 succeeded in reproducing the properties of the natural egg yolk, beginning from the plasma as an emulsifying agent; the U.S. Pat. No. 2,171,428 uses the plasma as an emulsifying agent for sausage; but the present invention reproduces the whole properties of the natural whole egg (liquid phase) using the plasma, not as an emulsifying agent, but as a protein furnishing agent.
It is important to point out that in the aforesaid patents, at no time mention is made about the product flavor as obtained in the respective formulae; meanwhile, surprisingly, in the present invention the natural whole liquid egg flavor is reproduced, without adding any flavoring agent. This flavor comes from the constitutive elements of the whole, as well as from the process to which they were subjected. Even if it could be said that the obtained yolk in U.S. Pat. No. 1,277,336 has the yolk flavor (although this is not indicated in the patent), in the present invention, the present inventors are not dealing with the white--or with the yolk flavor, as separately taken (it is obvious that they are different) but with the flavor of the whole natural egg.
Known ingredients, but unexpectedly combined in novel form, a surprisingly useful product is obtained which was unknown until now in the previous art.
It is widely known that one of the main concerns of mankind is the obtention of abundant protein sources in order to provide for the necessary supply of proteins in the daily diet of human beings.
Different researches that are being carried out permit the mass production of some types of proteins, such as soy, and intensive studies are being made to obtain proteins from mineral oil; also, encouraging results have been achieved, as yet only at a pilot level, in the extraction of proteins from alfalfa.
But until now, it had been difficult to find a really effective application for a very abundant source of proteins as is animal blood from animals, which are slaughtered for human consumption, such as beef cattle, pigs, chickens, hens, sheep and others, which supplies to the whole world a very large volume of raw materials with a high proteinic content of a natural origin.
Animal blood is partially or even totally wasted in many countries, and it has not been given the importance it rightfully deserves in human nourishment, because up to now it could not be presented in a practical way so as to make it perfectly compatible with the normal modalities of conventional food products.